OFF LIMITS

Color my world: Although Denver International Airport won't open for months, it's clearly ready for takeoff. Witness the hot-off-the-press Denver's International Airport (In)Activity Book, by (no joke) Ellen Cockshoot. "If I were using that as a pen name, I'd be doing porno," she says. Instead, she's done a sendup of Denver's Disaster In Action, now available at Tattered Cover and a few other local bookstores. "As a Coloradan watching the DIA drama unfold," she explains, "I knew that a book should be written on the airport--and I am sure that there will be many after it opens. But it seemed that a book should be written before it opens, a little light reading." After DIA opens, she adds, she might do an actual "activity" book--"but I'll have plenty of time for that."

Among the puzzles, cryptoquotes and factoids that Cockshoot's collected is "20/20 Hindsight," a true/false quiz of airport "snafus" including: 1) "If the roof catches fire, the burning Teflon, Fiberglas and resins would be more lethal than mustard gas." Pack your oxygen tanks: It's true, according to a few killjoy engineers. 2) "The `Mountain Mirage' water fountain rests directly above the station for the train and the high-voltage equipment that powers it." Cockshoot lists that as true, too, and it almost is. Actually, the fountain has never been installed--the Denver Botanic Gardens set up a cactus garden in its space instead. Even so, last week the ceiling above the station was leaking badly, and the train's few sorry passengers had to dodge the drops before boarding.

More trickle-down economics: As long as the Broncos are going to whine until they get a new stadium, at least here's a valid reason to complain about Mile High, guaranteed true by a Rockies usher who saw it with her own eyes. During one game this summer--back when there were baseball games--a mysteriously wet and yellow father/son pair approached her and said that a family of raccoons had just let loose directly above them. Sure enough, when the usher followed the sad twosome back to their seats, she discovered a household of the critters running on the rafters overhead. Animal control later evicted the interlopers.

Staying within the lines: As it turned out, state senator Dennis Gallagher didn't have much to worry about from Democratic opponent Jose Perea in the primary. But the longtime legislator took his unexpected challenger seriously enough to look closely at the petitions Perea turned in to the Secretary of State's office; he also asked forensic document examiner J. Donald Vacca to do the same. Despite the limited scope of Vacca's tests, he noted several inconsistencies, including different inks in the same name and different handwriting in the same lines. Natalie Meyer's office apparently agreed; after Gallagher filed a complaint, it knocked Perea's acceptable signatures down to 1,083--just 83 more than he needed to make the ballot.

Then Gallagher knocked him off entirely.
Gallagher's complaint pales, though, beside that of Richard Sokol, who challenged incumbent Adams County Clerk and Recorder Bob Sack. According to Sokol's attorney, Sack not only obtained confidential employment records dating from Sokol's days with the recorder's office before 1980 (not, he notes, that there was anything "derogatory" in them), but also let his staff run pro-Sack letters through the county postage meter, in official county envelopes.

Sack promised to take care of the matter. Last week he took care of Sokol as well.

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